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MacBook released this morning

Apple released its new MacBook line this morning. As an upgrade for the iBook it’s pretty awesome. As an upgrade for the 12″ powerbook, it makes me sad. I honestly think that they have just killed the 12″ powerbook entirely, I thought that they would try to keep part of that market through the high end MacBook line.

There are three things that bother me about this upgrade.

Integrated (Crappy) VideoIn all honesty, the integrated video does make sense if you assume that the machine is targeted at iBook users, not powerbook users. In fact, even if it’s targeted at powerbook users, it’s targeted at users that do primarily 2d graphic design work, NOT video production or 3d gaming. So in this sense it seems OK as well. I’m just whining that I won’t be able to play video games on this machine.

If you wanna go black, you’ve gotta payYou have to pay more for the black one. For two machines with the identical configuration you pay about $150 more to get your machine in black. That’s lame.

MacBook vs. MacBook Pro pricingThe differences between the upper end MacBook and the lower end MacBook pro are even sMacBookmaller than the differences between the iBook and the Powerbook; however, the difference in price has gone way up. I don’t really understand this.

If you compare machines with nearly identical spec (have to adjust the ram and HD on the MacBook and the RAM on the pro edition) there is a $690 difference in price. The only real differences are the size of the screen and the Video card. The video card difference is *huge* mind you, an onboard crappy card with no ram vs. an ATI pretty good card with 256 megs of ram.

The differences are actually pretty low. Ignoring the software and the size differences, you are left with the native DVI adapter and the improved graphics card as the only two real differences. This is definitely a big upgrade — but it’s not worth $690.

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One thought on “MacBook released this morning”

I agree with you totally. The graphics thing is such a bummer and it sucks that they want to bilk ya for the black ones. The gap between MacBook and Macbook Pro is too large and I think that they shouldn’t have scrapped the 12″ powerbook. It would seem smart to have an ultraportable “professional” model and such a machine would fill that gap nicely.